He lingered for a fleeting heartbeat, his gaze lingering on her before he turned toward the door, his frame coiled with the intent of departure.
Yet, before his boot could cross the threshold, her voice arrested him.
It was a soft sound, quiet as a falling petal, but laced with a venom that curdled the very air.
"By all means, proceed," Olivia murmured.
"Go to a woman who is not your wife, in the dead of night, to interrogate her on the transgressions of your own spouse. Oh, what a charming dialogue that shall be at such an ungodly hour."
Matthias stumbled, his momentum shattered.
His fingers, already grazing the cold brass of the handle, went still. Slowly—agonizingly—he turned to face her.
A spark flickered in the depths of his eyes, an unreadable shadow of something dark and ancient.
"What, precisely, are you implying, Olivia?"
She met his gaze with an iron-clad composure, her lips curving into the faintest ghost of a derisive smile.
"You heard me clearly enough. A gentleman visiting a lady in the sanctity of her private chambers while her husband is away—to question her regarding another woman, his own wife no less!"
"Does it not beg the question, Matthias? The true nature of your... devotion to Isabella."
Silence descended, thick and suffocating, wrapping around them like a shroud.
Then, the composure Matthias had been gripping like a frayed thread finally snapped. His poise shattered; his fury became a living, breathing thing in the room.
His jaw tightened into a hard line, the veins at his temple pulsing as he forced words through a throat constricted by white-hot rage.
"Olivia," he uttered.
Her name was not a call, but a serrated warning—a threat whispered in the dark.
"You have crossed a line from which there is no retreat. Do you even comprehend the gravity of your accusation? That I would betray my own blood?"
"That I would look upon my brother's wife with anything but the coldest indifference?"
His breath was labored now, his chest heaving under the crushing weight of his indignation.
He took a predatory step forward, his voice dropping to a dangerous, vibrating low.
"I would sooner drive a blade through both my eyes than cast a glance of desire toward Isabella—even for a fleeting second. Purge that filth from your mind, Olivia."
Olivia felt the atmosphere shift, the air growing heavy and electric with his wrath.
Yet, she did not flinch.
She stood her ground, an impenetrable fortress of malice, her cruel smile widening. She had struck a nerve, and she intended to twist the knife.
"You claim you would never look at Isabella because she belongs to your brother," she mused, tilting her head with a mock-curiosity that dripped with scorn.
"But what of that other woman? What was her name again?"
She paused with calculated precision, feigning a struggle to remember. Then, with a predatory glint of amusement in her eyes, she struck.
"Ah, yes. Lena. I wonder... did you find much enjoyment in watching her legs every day?"
Olivia had expected the familiar heat of his temper, but what met her was something far more devastating: a cold, kinetic explosion.
Matthias's hand lashed out with such blinding speed that, for a fleeting heartbeat, she braced for the impact of a blow.
Instead, his fist collided with the stone wall beside her.
The sound was a thunderclap that seemed to shake the very foundations of the room.
A jagged fissure appeared in the masonry, and his knuckles, raw and torn, began to weep crimson against the grey stone.
His breath came in ragged, uneven gasps, his entire frame vibrating with the effort of self-restraint.
"By the Heavens, Olivia, do you even hear the filth you speak?"
His voice was a low, dangerous vibration, trembling with a fury he could barely contain.
"What madness is this? Will you next accuse me of bedding every servant within these cursed walls?"
He took a predatory step closer, his physical presence looming over her, his features contorted by a bitter, soul-deep frustration.
"I am well aware of the whispers regarding that maid," he spat, the words like shards of glass.
"And I do not care. Do you mark me? I. Do. Not. Care. I have never so much as looked at her. I do not even know her name."
His hands curled into trembling white-knuckled spheres at his sides as he exhaled a sharp, jagged breath.
"Tell me, Olivia," he said, his voice dropping to a terrifying calm that was sharper than any shout.
"Will you continue to haunt these corridors, flinging accusations at shadows? Or will you finally let this pathetic mask of yours fall?"
The air between them was electric, charged with the ozone of a gathering storm.
But Olivia merely smiled. Her eyes glittered with a light that was neither fear nor regret.
She had pushed him to the precipice, and she was only just beginning to enjoy the view.
With the servants absent and no audience to demand the performance of propriety, the last vestiges of decorum perished.
In the gloom of the dimly lit chamber, they were no longer a lord and lady; they were two souls drowning in a shared resentment they had suppressed for months.
A slow, toxic smile spread across Olivia's lips as she took a deliberate step toward him.
"Is this the sermon of a man who has visited his wife a mere five times since their wedding night?"
Matthias did not flinch. Instead, his retort was a blade pressed directly against her throat.
"And is this the judgment of a wife who drowns herself in laudanum simply to avoid the touch of her husband?"
The words sent a violent shiver down her spine.
Her throat constricted; her pulse became a frantic drum.
She had forgotten—or perhaps she had hoped he had forgotten—how meticulously she had choreographed her escapes to avoid the indignity of sharing a bed with a man she once deemed her enemy.
She had fought the reality of their union with every breath, and she had found her ways.
Her lips parted, but the air refused to carry her words.
When she finally spoke, her voice was a fragile, trembling thing. "I... I only did so because—"
"Because?" he cut her off, his tone dripping with a searing irony. "Do not weary yourself with excuses, Olivia. I have no need of them."
He bridged the final inch between them until his breath stirred the stray hairs at her temple.
"Do you wish to know the truth?" he whispered, a sound so low it seemed to seep into her very marrow.
"I have a thousand reasons to betray you, should I desire it. But I never have. Not out of loyalty, nor out of some misplaced sense of duty—but because I refuse to be that man. I am not the sort of creature who breaks his vows."
He leaned in further, his lips ghosting against her ear, his words sinking in like slow-acting poison.
"Do you know what it felt like? Lying beside you?"
She went rigid, her hands clutching the fabric of her skirts.
"It felt," he continued, his voice dark and relentless, "as though I were violating a corpse. As if I were forcing myself upon a lifeless doll."
He recoiled then, his expression becoming an unreadable mask of stone, stripped of all warmth.
"This marriage was never a matter of the heart—it was a contract for an heir. And we fulfilled it. Even if he lies in the cold earth now."
His words were merciless, shorn of any pity.
"So, do not exert yourself any longer. You are no longer required to pretend."
He turned toward the door, his movements heavy and deliberate.
"You may leave," he said, his voice final. "I have had my fill of this dialogue. We shall discuss Isabella at another time."
He left no room for rebuttal, no space for the air to return to her lungs.
Olivia could find no words to bridge the chasm he had carved between them.
With hollow, rhythmic steps that felt disconnected from her own body, she turned toward the exit.
But before she could cross the threshold, Matthias was there.
His presence was sudden, a shadow falling over her, and she felt the unexpected weight of his heavy coat settle upon her shoulders.
"The night air is treacherous," he murmured, his voice stripped of its earlier venom, leaving only a haunting exhaustion. "Wear something warm."
Even now—after the flaying of her pride, after the brutal dissection of their marriage—he remained a man of maddening contradictions.
He refused, at the very least, to let her freeze.
She walked away in silence, a phantom draped in his scent, her mind a numb, echoing void.
Upon reaching the sanctuary of her chambers, she moved with frantic purpose toward the bureau.
Her fingers trembled violently as she yanked open the drawer.
There they were, nestled in neat, clinical rows: the vials. Small, dark, and seemingly infinite.
The sedatives. The very shackles Matthias had cast in her face this night.
A wave of incandescent rage, unlike any she had ever known, surged through her.
She snatched the bottles in both hands and, without a moment's hesitation, began to hurl them against the floor.
One by one, the glass shattered—a symphony of crystalline destruction.
The dark liquid bled into the crevices of the stone floor, a grim tableau of every ounce of peace she had ever bought at the cost of her soul.
The door burst open. Keira rushed in, her eyes wide with terror as she took in the carnage.
"My Lady! What are you doing? You'll cut yourself to ribbons!"
"Stay back!" Olivia screamed, her voice raw, cracking under the weight of an approaching storm.
She collapsed onto the cold stone, her fingers tangling in her hair, her breath coming in short, jagged gasps that bordered on sobbing.
She had spent so long building a fortress of composure; so long convincing herself that she held the reins of her destiny.
But tonight, sitting amidst the glittering shards of glass and the dregs of her ruined defiance, she felt utterly and irrevocably lost.
Every time she reached out to mend the fraying threads of their bond, she collided with the monstrous ghosts of her own making.
There were things she had done—sins she had committed against him—that seemed to defy the very possibility of repair.
Exhaustion eventually claimed the territory that rage could no longer hold.
There, in the center of the wreckage she had wrought with her own hands, Olivia finally drifted into a dark, fitful sleep.